Twelve Month Autumn
by LilyFlowerEvans
Summary: A memior of the changes Lily went through her seventh year and the events afterwards. Falling for James, marriage, and having Harry come into her life, told from her point of view.


Prologue:

Sometime there comes a time when one feels that they must put quill to parchment and let the ink flow into whatever words come to them and for some reason, which I am sure that I do not know, its seems to me that my time has come to do so. Today is not a particularly lovely or miserable day, it is just a day, but all the same I sit here in the flat I share with my husband and son, thinking that it is a very fine idea that I write the story of how I came to be in this particular place and the fight I put up to keep myself out of this very situation.

Its not that I don't love my husband and son, not, it's nothing like that at all, but if anyone had told me only four or five years ago that this was my future, my destiny perhaps, I would have laughed them from the room and the building. You see, I did not always feel so fondly of the man I now can't live without. No, it was once quite the opposite. The fury I felt for him in my school days could not be described it words, so I hope it suffices to say that he was everything I had opposed and worked towards eliminating.

Dramatic, I'm sure, but I have never been the most emotionally stable woman, especially not in my younger years when I was still finding myself. There was no doubt that the stigma of red headed tempers was quite true, in my case. As you may imagine, there was quite a large turn of events that changed my mind, though many smaller events had grouped together to form the final straw of my resistance.

Even now, thinking back, I see everything that happened so very clearly, but then I was as blind to it all as a sheer brick wall might be blind to people walking past it. Maybe I did see it then, but I did a nice job of keeping it out of my thoughts and no one around me made too obvious a comment either. They must have felt that whatever was happening was much to delicate to be spoken of, as if in uttering a word to describe it their tongues would break it as easily as a teacup would against the floor.

This must sound so very vague, but I don't think I could make a summary of it using anymore detail, for I would just end up pouring every ounce of the story into this prologue and the rest of the memoir might be just a bunch of empty pages. Each step of this tale is intertwined like thick vines growing up a building and to try and pull them apart would only cause them to all come tumbling down.

I beg your patience while I set this story out in ink, for I know it will take me a long while and I can't help but think my slowness might somehow cause the readers eyes and minds to take the same pace, as ridiculous as that is. But let me go on into the days when I suppose the first of this tale blossomed.

Climbing onto the train that year was more joyous than it had been even on my first year at Hogwarts, though my trunk was quite a bit heavier for all of the books my studies required, for instead of my black Hogwarts robes, which I preferred to put on in the train station bathroom rather than on the train, being bare as most students were, there was a badge gleaming brightly in the sun. Upon it was written a simple "Head Girl," but despite the plainness of the lettering, it was what I had been striving for the moment I had started at the school. At last I had reached as far as I could go before graduating and the very least I can say was that I was more proud of myself than I had ever been before.

I pushed my trunk to the heads department with more urgency this year, than I had last year when I was only going to be there as a prefect, and after I had arrived I found that pushing it onto the overhead shelf was much easier thanks to the energy if accomplishment I felt running through me to my fingertips. Then I sat down on the seat, looking very intently at the door of the compartment, for there was only one more thing that I had to be certain of before I deemed this year the most perfect of my life. I just had to know that the head boy had been chosen wisely. At the time I was quite sure that whomever the headmaster had picked, they would do wonderfully, but I had my own preference as to who would come through that door all the same.

Then I had hoped that it would be Remus Lupin who joined me in my duties. He was a bright, studious young man with a kind disposition that people seemed to respect for the most part. Another thing was that he was also in my house, Gryffindor, and had been the prefect with me to previous two years. That meant that the two of us had experience working with one another and so it wouldn't be difficult for us to find a rhythm to operate in. Not to mention that he was of the attractive sort with his longish sandy hair and shining light blue eyes. Of course, I would never let my feelings interfere with my duties, but his presence would make even the most difficult of them pleasant.

Of course, he never did come through that door to join me, as this would be a pointless story if he had. Instead I found myself staring at the last person who I felt should have been chosen, when that door opened and he seemed to know that was how I would feel, as he opened the door more slowly that necessary and stood in the entry way looking sheepish for a moment before he stepped inside.

The thought that he would become head boy was so far removed from my mind that the idea didn't come into my head in any way, shape, or form. I asked him why he had come to bother me so as soon as I recognized his face, giving him scarcely time to breathe much less torture me with insults or courtship. You see, just as much as I loathed him, he loved me and so he spent his every moment when I was near asking me to accompany him places or kiss him or other such nonsense. Needless to say, I was never too pleased to see him opening his mouth to speak to me, so I had attacked first and removed the possibility that he would start with one of those annoyances. Little did I know there was far worse to come. "Remus isn't here yet and so you can kindly wait until this meeting is finished to speak with him."

I had already removed all doubt from my mind that the object of my adoration had be picked for the position and so I felt confident enough to name him as my counterpart without proof. Talk of counting the chickens before they hatch, but Remus was so high in my respect that I couldn't imagine anyone else filling the place. Really, his only flaw was being friends with the nuisance, whose name was James Potter, I should mention, who was standing in the doorway. What my beloved Mister Lupin saw in him, I had never understood, but I did see quite clearly that they had formed a fiercely loyal bond between themselves and two other boys in the same house and year.

Many times had I seen the four of them leaning together and whispering of things I didn't even want to think about. They had formed some kind of group and called themselves the Marauders. Their very purpose in life was to cause chaos around them as a source of amusement, whether it be hexing a rival or turning a teacher's robes magenta during a lesson. I had always tried to disassociate Remus from the worst of it, but sometimes it became impossible when I though of the bond those boys shared. It was like nothing I have ever seen and still continues to the very day that I am sitting here and I am quite sure that if I lived five lifetimes I might never find friends as close as them, even if I scoured the world looking.

James stood looking at me for several seconds before he brought himself to say anything. At that point I had taken no notice of his hesitation, but as soon as he was done speaking I had known that he had been worried that I would not believe what he was saying, which I didn't, and that I would be terribly angry, which I was. "Remus isn't head boy." Another pause. "I am." Then I did notice that badge on his chest, but the simple piece of metal was not enough to convince me, as I was so determined to have my last year at the school flow by flawlessly.

"How dare you," I said, whispering at first. "How dare you," I repeated after a moment, louder and with a large amount of fury in my voice. I stood up and stepped towards him, eyes narrow, lips pinch, and with my jaw clenched tightly. I must have been an intimidating sight because he took a step backwards so that he was half standing in the hallway. "Give me that badge this instant before I take 20 points from Gryffindor and no I do not care that it is my own house or that it will put us into the negatives so don't bother with that."

He looked frightened, though he was nearly a head taller than me, but he didn't put the badge into the shaky palm I was holding out to him. Instead he slipped around the side of me and sat down on the bench with a sigh. For a moment he said nothing and only looked out the window with his hazel eyes looking troubled, but it wasn't long until he opened his mouth to explain himself. "This is no prank, Evans. I received my letter the same as you, so if you will, please sit down and save your energy for the meeting. Seeing that I have never been to one of these before, you will have to lead it by yourself." He said all of this, trying to sound sarcastic, but the sad undertones of his words added to the faraway expression he wore as he faced the window were enough to tell me that he didn't like the situation anymore than I did.

Instead of being more infuriated with him, I did sit down, as he had recommended, though more out of shock than out of worry about leading the meeting. Talking to the prefects was the least of my worries at this point. "It can't be true, can it?" I asked, talking to myself rather than the person across from me, and looking down at my legs. Then an idea, abiet a desperate one that I knew was unlikely if not impossible, clicked into my mind and I turned my eyes up and looked at him. "It must be some sort of mistake," I told him. "Of course the letter must have been sent by mistake."

James turned to look at me with his lips pulling into a sad little smile. With that I knew that he had already found something that would shatter my theory so any relief that I had felt melted from my face. "Yes, I would have liked to believe that and I did for a short time. That was before I noticed the address on the outside of the letter. James Potter, Godric's Hollow, the second floor hallway, near the window." He let out a sound that was almost a laugh, but it seemed that he couldn't quite make it. "It was exactly where I was when the owl had appeared. That's when I figured that the letter had been intended for me."

My lips formed a small "o" of surprise though I uttered no sound for nearly a minute. Why on earth would Professor Dumbledore have chosen him over so many more worthy candidates? I could not think of a single reason. The headmaster must have finally lost his mind just as some had said he was. The old man with his long beard and hair had always seemed to be wise in everything he did. Each decision had a purpose, so why had he chosen my partner, so to speak, with such carelessness? Again, I could find no reason. I would have kept on in my own thoughts for the rest of the train ride, but James then cleared his throat, breaking my concentration.

Blinking, I found that I had been staring at him for an extended period of time. A blush rose to my pale cheeks and my face turned to the door so that he might not notice it. "Why should he pick you," I muttered to him with a bite to my voice. I blamed him for this, now, as he had always been easy to blame in times past when something of mine went missing or turned suddenly into a squid.

The corners of his mouth twitched as if he was quite annoyed with the way I was acting. It was strange to see this messy haired boy anything but laughing happily when he was around. The situation was growing more and more puzzling by the moment, it seemed. His lips parted to speak, but before another word was uttered the prefects arrived in the compartment and I stood to start the meeting.

With a nudge, James stood up as well, looking half nervous and half like he had been damned to eternal torture. I tore my eyes away from the head boy and his strange behaviour and smiled as if everything was normal and started the meeting. "I'm Lily, the head girl and this is…" I couldn't help, but pause thinking that had never guessed I would be uttering these words. "James Potter, he will be your head boy for this year."


End file.
